Thursday, May 15, 2008

Friday On SPEED Explodes Your DVR

Wall-to-wall NASCAR comes your way all day on SPEED this Friday, and we do mean "all day."

SPEED starts with a two hour block of All-Star Race highlight shows at 7AM Eastern Time. Titles like The Pass In The Grass and The Tide Slide tip-off veteran fans that these four shows are going to be worth recording or watching as they air.

At 9AM, the Craftsman Trucks take to the track for practice. It will be Rick Allen and Phil Parsons calling the action. Down in the garage area will be Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander. There is an unconfirmed report that Michael Waltrip may be stopping by the announce booth.

Down on the NASCAR Live set will be Steve Byrnes and John Roberts. Bob Dillner will be the reporter from the garage. This show will fill the gaps during the transitions as the Trucks end practice and the Cup cars take to the track.

The Sprint Showdown practice is first, and it will be the NASCAR on Fox crew of Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds in the announce booth. Down in the garage area will be Dick Berggren and Matt Yocum. At 1:30PM, the Sprint All-Star cars take to the track for practice, and the announce crew remains the same with one addition. Jeff Hammond joins the team in the Hollywood Hotel.

At 3PM, there will be another version of NASCAR Live. This show will serve to update the events of the day and the remaining programs. John Roberts will host this program with Hermie Sadler and Bob Dillner patrolling the garages.

At 3:30PM, the Craftsman Truck Series crew returns to host qualifying. Rick Allen, Phil Parsons, Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will call the action. Once again, a Michael Waltrip sighting is rumored.

The "big boys" come out at 5PM when the Sprint Cup cars take to the track. The first order of business will be qualifying for the Sprint Showdown cars. That will be the standard two laps for all of the cars in this event. Immediately following that action will be the very unique qualifying for the All-Star Race itself. This will be three laps long with a mandatory four tire change on pit road.

The NASCAR on Fox gang will again handle the Sprint Cup action with Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds on-the-air. Matt Yocum and Dick Berggren will handle the reporting duties.

John Roberts, Randy Pemberton and Bob Dillner will provide a flexible NASCAR Live show that will take the network to 7:30PM. As race fans know, trying to keep an on-track schedule on the Friday before the All-Star race has never worked out very well.

Krista Voda makes her return to the Craftsman Truck Series pre-race show on Friday night. She anchors The Set-Up at 7:30, which is one of the most focused and fan-friendly pre-race shows on-the-air. Voda's simple and straightforward style make this show always informative.

The Truck Series action gets underway at 8PM. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons return, this time with Michael Waltrip actually alongside in the booth. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will appear in The Set-Up and then handle the reporting duties from pit road.

Immediately after the NCTS race, it will be a full hour of Trackside. This show is hosted by Steve Byrnes with Larry McReynolds, Jeff Hammond and Darrell Waltrip on the big panel. Guests on the set this week include Casey Mears, David Ragan and the one and only Humpy Wheeler, the King of Lowe's Motor Speedway.

For those of you who may have missed the Wednesday night premier of Wendy Venturini's Hometown Heroes special, the program re-airs at 11:30PM to close-out a full day of NASCAR on SPEED.

This is one of those days when fans with DVR's or TiVo's have lots of fun. There is something for everyone in SPEED's airing of over seventeen hours of NASCAR TV on Friday. There will be a new post up for the live on-track action Friday morning for your comments all day long.

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19 comments:

Grrr I'm out of town right now and cant set up my DVR. Knew I should have looked to see what was on before leaving yesterday. The 4 half hour show (pass in the grass and so on) are on at 4:30am here. a BIT too early for us on the west coast :) Hope they replay them on Saturday or Sunday.

you know, this may sound shocking, but 80% of homes in the US do not even have DVRs. And most who do are more affluent (not a surprise.) So the rest of us just getting by will muddle along with our VCRs and DVD recorders.:)

But it should be a fun weekend. Pit crew challenge was interesting (well, they sure tried hard to make it so...) I caught half of Wendy's show so I'm looking forward to catching the rest of it.

I don't have a DVR but I do have a dvd recorder with a tuner,I am taping the 2 hour various years of "The Winston",which I still call it. I was at the '89 Winston,I went with my dad,dad was sure mad at Rusty,lol!!!

My poor DVR is going to be screaming for mercy by Sunday! LOL! I guess I am really lucky! My Cable co offers the DVR thur them. I just had to go down to the cable office and pick up the cable box with the DVR in it. It does cost 9.95 a month, but worth every cent, cause of everything it can do.

Well, darn, I've quit checking on Speed Channels schedule because most of the time, they don't have programming I bother to watch. Well, at least after reading this column, I know when to setup the DVR for the repeats of the highlight shows. Speed used to be one of the channels that I always checked to see what was on, but because of their lack of NASCAR programming over the past couple of years (except for Friday's and RaceDay) that I've just quit making it "must see TV". Well, it's great to know that this is on, but like others, I'm working through much of it, I'll have to catch what I can when I get home.

I'm home today watching SPEED. One perk of being unemployed. But if I was at work, the DVR would be busy.

Eighty percent do not have DVRs? Trust me, I am not affluent. I also got mine through my cable co. Since TV is our major form of entertainment, it is worth the few dollars more a month. DVR's rule. Makes VCRs seem prehistoric.

Loved the title to this blog! Made me laugh, and, yes, I've enjoyed lots of the coverage today, too.

I'll catch the second half of Wendy's show as well. We had storms from he** here in Austin Wednesday night and lost power for 6.5 hours. Of course, the storms couldn't wait until after Wendy's show was over!

Don't have a DVR but was lucky enough to be able to stay home and watch NASCAR programming today. I really enjoyed the All-Star Spotlight shows. Wish SPEED would air more shows like these. They could do one for each track they visit. Dave Despain does well with these specials. Wendy Venturini's Hometown Heroes show was also interesting.